Sherpa Foundry a three-year-old, San Francisco-based group thats among a growing number of outfits to help older and non-tech companies better understand how tech startups might help them is looking to fold in some new customers. It anticipates a growing number of themwill come from overseas, too.
While Sherpa Foundry launched with three corporate partners Cond Nast, DreamWorks, and eBay CEO Neal Hansch tells us the firm recently added aleading European telco, to its customer roster and that its also talking with a Middle Eastern shopping mall company. (It also added an unnamed top five U.S. retailer, he notes. The firm says it plans to reveal thesenew customersshortly.)
What are these customers getting from Sherpa Foundry, which was cofounded by Sherpa Capital founders Shervin Pishevar and Scott Stanford but is run as a separate business? According to Hansch, who was appointed CEO in March of this year, theyre essentially getting a team of 20 people who act as a meta search engine across the startup ecosystem, filtering out top entrepreneurs and companies and helping customers who might not know better (or have the time) to cut through the noise.
Indeed, among the outcomes that have led to hundreds of millions of dollars in strategic investment and partnerships for which Sherpa Foundrytakes credit are connecting eBay to the shipping service Shyp,an integration that allowssellers to market a better shipping experience to buyers; introducing Conde Nast to the customized skincare e-commerce company Curology (Conde Nast subsequently invested);and introducingCue, a pre-market health diagnostics startup, to Johnson & Johnson,which has since formed a co-development partnership with the company.
Says Hansch of SherpaFoundry, whose customers pay it a flat, six-figure annual fee, Were not consultants. We arent doing project work. We arent bankers trying to land success fees. Our members agendas are entirely our agendas, which makes us unbiased.
The outfit also isnt a next-generation Gartner Group, he insists. We arent a research house. Our research is toward sector mapping, laying out the landscape, and doing filtering that you cant read about. Were using the same process that any venture fund goes through in making investment decisions, which is sometimes to discern, out of 120 players, which are the 12 that insiders are paying attention to.
Finally, adds Hansch,Sherpa Foundry isnota corporate outreach arm of Sherpa Capital. Obviously, [Sherpa Capitals]portfolio companies are in the family, so we have access to them. But we work for our members, and they want to be connected to the best companies in a particular category, no matter who backs them.
Perhaps though its worth noting thatSherpa Capital led the Series A rounds of both Curology and Cue.
Certainly, one can see the appeal of organizationslike Sherpa Foundry. If you want to talk to McDonalds but dont know where to start, its nice to know that someone can make that connection for you. Indeed, in addition to making sure it has relationships with as manyblue chip corporations as possible, Hansch says the firm regularly hostsevents for its customers that feature founders and VCs so that all three can speak directly. Ultimately, the startups benefit and the corporates benefit. Were also helping VCs portfolio companies by making introductions, he notes.
Asked about the many accelerators, incubators, and other outfits trying to make these same connections in Silicon Valley, Hansch readily concedes that theres plenty of competition. But he argues that theres plenty of demand, too, particularly from corporatesoutside of Silicon Valley thateither dont have a local presence or have a minimal one that Sherpa can amplify.
While two of itsfounding members are Silicon Valley bellwethers, what Sherpa Foundry is doing really resonates with [companies] that are headquartered in London or Dubai or even Minneapolis, says Hansch. Were calling out for them where they should really be spending their time.
